To Learn The Games You Play
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: Exploring the relationship of John Connor and Allison Young. Yuletide Challenge 2010.


(Title from _Sun Keeps Shining on Me_)

**Prompt:** Explore the relationship of John Connor and Allison Young (the human girl who is the basis for Cameron's appearance). Episodes references and inspirations 1.06, 2.04, and 2.22.

~||x||~

Allison's problem is never that she doesn't remember. It's burning under her tongue, in her veins and the furious pounding of her heart, even when it's the very first thing she tells the monsters. Her captors. The Terminators. Skynet.

She's going to be tortured.

Starved. Treated like an animal.

She's going to wish she had died.

They branded her the first time she refused them. A bar code instead of the name she refused to say. She didn't scream as it burned off her skin. The shock and horror and pain were too deep for even crying right then.

Even if she did start screaming her name right after.

She screamed it, over and over again, _Allison_! _Allison Young!,_ pointless and useless and desperate, not ready to die, not ready for the hell that would bring her into death, until they threw her into a cell.

~||x||~

_The first time John Connor saw her he did a double take as though he'd seen a ghost. _

_Allison, in clothes ratty from months of continual wear, her hair a stringy mess obscuring her face, shoveling food into her mouth so fast she would be sick enough to vomit it out fifteen minutes later, only knew it happened because the guy next to her nudged her so hard she almost lost her battered bowl. _

"_What?" she snapped, clutching it tighter. It might have been her desperation. _

_The man probably hadn't even elbowed her. "You know him?" _

_She remembers that man next to her so well. He had yellow teeth and he'd leered at her when she hunkered down with her food. Like she was a child waiting to be used. But when she looked up where he'd pointed no one stood out. _

_There were others hunkered down to the walls, eating or huddled for warmth, holding weapons against invisible, but never imaginary, threats. There'd been a group of men talking in the doorway, people running this camp. But they'd turned away from her by the time she looked up. _

_They were just another group of people. People who believed they could survive. _

_People who were sadly misinformed about the state of affairs and the collapse of the world. _

_The only thing she cared to know about them at all was if they had more food for her to eat. _

~||x||~

The interrogation started simply. She never understood why. This was a war, they interrogated for the oddest details on both sides to get to what they actually needed. She was just an animal, not even meat to them.

She'd prepared herself in that rusty hole they'd thrown her into. They were going to ask her about John Connor. They were going to ask her for the location of their base. They were going to ask her for their plans.

The same way they'd asked for her name. At the end of a laser.

And she wasn't going to give them anything. Even if they burned her entire arm this time. And they might. So few came back from capture, from the machines, and those who did were shells of who they were. She'd done a good job the last few years. She could die proud of herself finally.

She could die protecting the people who protected the world.

She wasn't ready when they asked her where she lived.

She wasn't ready when they asked her about her life and family.

She couldn't figure out what this had to do with The Resistance or Skynet at all, and suddenly the only thought that surfaced in her head, as she broke into tears, was that she didn't want to die, she didn't want to die, she just wanted to go home, to her real home, to the only home she'd ever had.

~||x||~

_She remembers Palmdale the way you remember things in a dream. _

_Blurry. Too bright. Perfect. Seamlessly smooth. _

_It was bright green, with more trees than any land ever needed. Thick branches on some and long fronded ones on others. Tall. So tall they seemed to reach up, like gods, and become the very pillars which held up the bright blue of the sky. The grass was always green, too. And lush between her tiny pink toes. _

_It was always arid and hot, sticking to her skin like a coat no matter the season._

_Like you were inside the very sun, except it was a safe heat. Held tight and close. _

_Warmth. The kind of warmth The Resistance could never find or make. _

_The kind of warmth that existed in John Connor's laugh. _

_He was that way. No matter how bad the bad days got, how many people didn't make it back, times they almost did but didn't, he found a way to laugh, to urge them on, and when he laughed for a second you believed him. That it was only a setback. They'd find a way tomorrow. _

_There'd be laughter tomorrow and sunshine and more Palmdales. _

_Even if that tomorrow was years off, maybe even decades. _

_He made you believe and it was why she'd hated him. _

_~||x||~  
_

Of course, she ran.

She wanted to live. As much as she was willing to die, she wanted to live. She wanted to go on fighting, she wanted to see the bastards ground into scrap for every name she'd etched into a wall in that camp. It was different at John Connor's camp than anywhere else.

You didn't remember people in other places. They were too heavy. The number of lives. The number of deaths. From fights. And starvation. The breath of the cold steel breathing down your neck, waiting to snap your bones like china. You were told holding on made you weak, made you less of a fighter, too emotionally invested to pay attention, dead already.

John Connor told a different story. Every life, every single one no matter how short or long. Every life, even if it was terrible or terrified or only had one good act in it. Every single life and every single name that came with it. Etched into the walls to remind you.

You never were and never would be alone.

You would always be remembered. You mattered.

Being captured in the attempt to escape surely had sealed her death. Even shuddering from the cold of the water and the second capture in a net in days she couldn't count, she saw herself there. Reminding herself. She walked where others had. She had taken strength in the bravery of their sacrifices for every single inch and day each life gained them.

And then she'd had to dig her tattered nails into her palm when the Terminator walked out of the darkness wearing her face. Terror. Horror. Confusion. Skin jobs weren't news to them. They had the best of the best information, but wearing her face. With her hair nicely brushed and her clothes cleaner than they'd been in half her life, lying to her about wanting peace.

She could see it now. Why she was alive. Why the questions.

Why she had to die as soon as feasibly possible.

~||x||~

_It was actually more than two years before she saw John Connor again. After the first time he saw her. She became a foot soldier. Not phenomenal, but passable. She was small and she could run fast and she could fit places other people couldn't. And she was brave enough to do the work others wouldn't. _

_She was passed up through different camps. All of them the same. She ran mission after mission as required. Helping to rescue people. Helping to blow up the world even worse than it already was. She didn't know how she kept moving up. She knew what people thought of her. _

_Belligerent and reckless and too soft, all at once. But the missions kept coming, and she kept being shifted around, and she kept going, because they fed her and gave her a bed. Because each day's work meant she wasn't as bad as them. That she was still human and she still cared about anything. _

_But caring and believing were two very different things. _

_Her last mission before she would meet him again was an attack against a server system. It was a simple job. Lay the explosive, get out, make sure nothing and no one else did. If she had anyone to joke with, she'd say calling it a simple job is what jinx's it, even if you've done fifty others like it. _

_The explosion didn't go off, even after they'd been discovered. Something about the fuse that no one could figure out in the heat of it. She'd gone running back in before anyone could stop her. Reckless. Belligerent. Death wish. Mission accomplished. _

_She woke up three days later, gasping._

_With the silver bracelet already on her wrist. _

_~||x||~  
_

It's all about planning once she's seen its face.

She wants to live. But she can't now.

There's no telling how many of them have her face. No telling what they're planning to do, or how they know she's from John's camp. But they know and they're going to try and use her. Her face. Her information. To get inside. To stop him. And that means she has to stop them. Now. Here.

When she convinces herself it's just another mission, everything becomes deathly calm.

She begins to weigh the pros and the cons, begins to look at like it's a puzzle.

She was always so good at figuring out the smallest loop holes in plans.

It's so simple really. It's the first thing. The safest way.

To make the Terminators think she's playing along, while revealing instantly to the others that she is dead, or as good as. That her face can't ever be trusted again. How far the machines have gotten in figuring them out. She'll give up the camp. But she won't give up how to walk in.

~||x||~

_Allison wasn't impressed the first time she met John Connor. _

_He was a man. Just a man. Not a legend, not a hero, not someone to worship at the source of. _

_Even though she knows if he had been, had been even a cent of any of those things, she would have hated him even more than she did the first time. He'd said it had been a long time since someone made him feel insulted with a compliment about saving their life, and handed her off to one of his subordinates. _

_People tried to convince her, but she blew them off._

_Being sold on a savior was about as weird as realizing one was stalking you. _

_He wasn't actually stalking her, but she'd tease him later that he was. It was a small camp, but he seemed to end up everywhere she did. Watching her from across a hall. Glances during debriefings. Yelling at her for not following exact orders and endangering herself, only then to assign her missions everyone else thought were ludicrous. _

_Learning he'd been doing that for over a year, while she wasn't in their camp, was almost as confusing as being told that he'd watched over her when she was sleeping after she'd gotten so badly hurt she'd nearly lost a leg. She'd called the doctor a liar. Except she'd caught Connor in the act the next time. _

_She didn't believe his answers when she called him on it. That he did that for every new recruit. It was a lie. There were newer people now and he didn't. He was John Connor. He had better thing to do than watch over newbies. Than stalk her. He was supposed to be saving whatever was left of the whole damn world._

_He'd laughed at that. Actually laughed. Before going entirely sober and asking her if she wanted food, as though he'd actually missed hearing anything she said. And then he came back. The next day and the next. With plans. And food. And a book once. And his insufferable warm laugh, that got into your bones, like the sunshine in her dreams. _

_And his unshakable belief they would not only survive – but win. _

_~||x||~  
_

She knows she's going to die as soon as it drops the cut-up silver bracelets on the table before her. She can't help thinking it should have been more climactic. She would have chosen explosions. Exploding always sounded like a fast way to go, at least. No amount of time to think about it. About anything.

The way your heart leaps into your chest suddenly.

How you can suddenly feel all of your toes and all of your fingers.

How you want to jump up and run, but are suddenly frozen in one spot.

While all of you feels like you're going in a million directions all at once.

Her face is beaten and scratched up, she can feel it, and in front of her is her own face still, too. Beautiful. Clear and beautiful, as though from some completely different world. Beautiful and devoid of life as the hand attached to it grabbed her throat and lifted her.

There are no words this time. No tears and no screams. Her throat explodes in the pain from the force lifting her by it. They want begging, instead she swears vehement and hoarse, around that hand and her pounding heart, that she will never help them get to John. She can see that it doesn't understand. That vacant face that doesn't know what it is.

To learn. To laugh. To live. To grow.

It's never that Allison can't remember.

~||x||~

_John Connor doesn't have friends. _

_He doesn't talk to anyone, even though he can be found talking to everyone, will always take the worst jobs himself with the least number of people that can manage it. He walks around as though the weight of the world isn't on his shoulders and he so rarely lets anyone actually see it. _

_But once he lets you in, you can't look at him without seeing it. On him, around him, always. _

_No one knows where he came from exactly. You always assume it's as messed up as everyone else. It existed until doomsday. Except once you're in his camp, you figure out more. You figure out his complicated hate for and loyalty to the machines. _

_The fact that each of them have been living with this since Doomsday._

_But John Connor has been living with this since he was born. Before, if it's possible. _

_She joked, often, that she was the simplest thing he had to deal with. Except. He chose her. Singled her out. Did a double-take. Followed her. Assigned her. Picked her. Stared at her sometimes as though looking for someone else. Someone he was never willing to speak about. _

_Nor was willing to speak about the way he buried his head on her shoulder. So natural and intimate and undone, as though he had done it before. How he traced her facial features, or studied their fingers intertwined, as though trying to discern something completely unorthodox from something entirely normal. _

_Or the time when he fell ill, when he'd been delirious before they'd managed to get the right medicine and she'd been swearing at him that he'd better not die, he'd curled his face into her hand rambling, delirious. About how she would never let him die, because she came to protect him. _

_~||x||~  
_

It's never that Allison can't remember.

It's that she can't forget.

Even at the end.


End file.
